


control

by constellatixns



Series: bruce banner has my entire soul [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (he is but he has very low self esteem), Angst, Bruce-centric, Gen, Heavy Angst, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), bruce is not a hero, did i mention the angst, i'm sorry in advance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 00:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14944109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellatixns/pseuds/constellatixns
Summary: Bruce is someone who's spent his entire life struggling for control.Or: Bruce and the Hulk and how Infinity War changed them.





	control

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic seized me at 2 in the morning and refused to let me go until I had written half of it. It's not beta-read, and any errors are completely my own. 
> 
> (All characters belong to Marvel.)

Bruce is someone who’s spent his entire life struggling to be in control.

 

From day one, it was  _ keep it down _ . It was always  _ close your mouth _ , it was always  _ shut up and take it. _ One slip-up could mean a beating, or worse. Rebecca Banner learned that the hard way. Living with Brian Banner meant that staying in control was almost literally life or death. Bruce learned how to retreat inside his head when things got bad, how to keep a tight leash on his words and his body. He failed to stay in control only once before the accident: the night Brian hit his head on Rebecca’s tombstone. Bruce ( _ he was a killer _ , he thought to himself,  _ even before the Hulk _ ) never let his grip on control slip again.

 

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and Bruce’s last name wasn’t the only thing he inherited from his father. Before the accident, before the Hulk, Bruce was still angry. The serum reveals what’s truly inside a person, and when you strip Bruce down to his core, well–there’s a reason why he didn’t turn into Captain America. He’s always had rage simmering just beneath his calm facade, always had the monster ready to break through the surface. The accident just revealed what was already in him.

 

Bruce is someone who’s spent his entire life struggling to be in control. When the Hulk happens and he’s running from various government agencies in ten different countries, he takes it day by day. He sleeps, he breathes, he runs, and the Hulk is there for all of it, straining to take over his body. Later, Tony will marvel at how Bruce managed to hold it together for so long. The truth is, Bruce has been fighting for control his entire life, and those ten years were just an extension of what he’s learned to do to survive. 

 

To him, the Hulk has always been the dark side of himself: a representation of all his ugliest parts exposed for the whole goddamn world to see. To everyone else, the Hulk is many things: a weapon, an experiment, an accident, a monster. Natasha Romanoff shows up in Kolkata on Nick Fury’s behalf under the flimsy pretense of using Bruce’s intellect, but he knows that SHIELD only wants the Other Guy. His body is a weapon that they’ve been waiting to use for almost a decade, and they’re jumping at the chance to take him in. The thought might have scared him, once, but ten years (a lifetime) of running, of numbness, of struggling for the keys to his own body, have worn him down. So he lets them take him. There’s nothing left to lose.

 

The Battle of New York represents a lot of firsts for Bruce: his first time coming back to the States in almost a decade, his first time in New York after he destroyed Harlem, and his first alien invasion. Bruce looks at the Chitauri toppling skyscrapers and pulverizing civilians and there’s an ache in his chest. His body is a weapon, and he has a chance to use it–for good things. He’s tired of running, of hiding, of waiting for the inevitable Hulk-out to happen once he finally settles somewhere. He’s tired of fighting with himself. His body is a weapon, he thinks, and for the first time in his life, Bruce lets go. 

 

Here is a secret: pulling the trigger on the Hulk is terrifying yet cathartic at the same time. “I’m always angry,” Bruce says to Steve–the war hero, the experiment gone right, America’s golden boy–and it’s never been more true than that moment. Bruce delves into the rage at his center, lets the Hulk take command of his body with a blink of his eyes, and sinks into unconsciousness with something like relief. Here is another secret: when you’ve been holding on to something for a lifetime, letting go is the easiest thing in the world.

 

Bruce is someone who’s spent his entire life struggling for control. This changes, somewhat, when he joins the Avengers. Hydra’s still out there, and once a week or so they have to go take care of one supervillain or another. The Hulk is always their last resort, but more often than not, he is called into the field. Afterwards, Steve always asks him how he’s doing with an all-too-clear look of pity on his face.

 

“He’s like a dog,” Bruce tells the rest of the Avengers after a mission. He’s de-transformed and wearing Tony’s too-small jeans as they fly back to New York. “I keep him inside too long and he gets restless. If I let him out occasionally, he’s quieter. It’s better this way, really.”

 

And that’s the truth. When he was on the run and things got really bad, when Bruce was at his seventh safe house in as many days, he wondered who was in control. But now, working daily in the ten-times-better-than-state-of-the-art labs of Avengers Tower, sitting around the dining table with this ragtag group of superheroes eating greasy fast food after taking down an evil scientist, watching the sun set over the New York skyline, Bruce can let down his walls a little. He’s safe, for the most part, and the Hulk has been appeased.

 

Like most things, it’s temporary.

 

On the helicarrier, before the Battle of New York, Bruce said to the Avengers, “We’re not a team. We’re a timebomb.” He was right, in a sense. After all, what do you expect when you put two expert spies, a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, a superhuman soldier torn out of time, a lost god, and a small man with a very large alter-ego together? Nothing lasts, and Bruce knows this from ten years of being on the run. He called them a timebomb and he meant  _ None of you are safe around me. _ He called them a timebomb and he meant  _ I was a killer before the Hulk _ . He called them a timebomb and he meant  _ You can’t kill me, I tried. _

 

Bruce is someone who’s spent his entire life struggling for control. Wanda Maximoff strips him of any power over his own body with a twist of her hands. She took the Hulk, yes, but she took much more than that, too. Bruce’s grip on the Hulk is ripped from his fingers, and all he can do is watch as Wanda seizes the keys to his brain and the Hulk razes Johannesburg. Everything he’s worked towards his entire life disintegrates in front of his eyes as she steals control from Bruce’s grasp. It’s no wonder that the Hulk flees after Sokovia. Bruce would, too, if the Hulk hadn’t already stolen one of SHIELD’s jet and left the planet. When he’s not in control, nobody’s safe around him.  _ Nothing lasts _ , Bruce thinks, and his heart is heavy with a lifetime of leaving.

 

* * *

 

The two years on Sakaar where the Hulk is the Grandmaster’s prized contender only remain as fuzzy glimpses of colors and sounds in Bruce’s mind. He drifts in and out of limbo helplessly, locked in the trunk as the Hulk snatches the wheel. Two years in the future, on a ruined SHIELD jet, Bruce comes back to his worst nightmare. The Hulk stole two years of his life and is roaring to break free and take more. He’s surrounded by aliens, and he’s not even on Earth, for fuck’s sake. And if he ever lets the Hulk take the wheel again, there’s no guarantee Bruce himself is coming back. The thought of losing control for the rest of his life, of letting the Other Guy rampage around the universe like a bull in a china shop, sends chills down his spine.

 

“You’re never going to have to think about the Hulk again,” Thor says, and  _ god _ Bruce hopes like hell it’s the truth but he knows it’s not. 

 

Bruce is not a hero. He’s not the self-sacrificing type like Steve, he doesn’t have a super-suit like Tony, he hasn’t trained to be a weapon for his whole life like Natasha and Clint have, and he’s definitely not a literal god like Thor is. But he’s hovering in their stolen Sakaarian spaceship over the Rainbow Bridge, watching Hela’s minions demolish Asgard’s gilded towers and splatter the streets with civilian blood, and he knows there’s only one right thing to do.

 

“You wanna know who I am?” Bruce asks Valkyrie, and he jumps off the deck of the spaceship.

 

He’s Bruce Banner, a murderer and an accident and a freak. He’s the Other Guy, the monster under your bed, the experiment gone wrong. He’s a child cowering at the top of the stairs watching his father beat his mother until she’s eerily still on the bloodied carpet. He’s a nuclear physicist with seven PhDs, none of which allow him to fly alien spacecraft. He’s a fugitive who can speak bits and pieces of eleven different languages picked up from the streets of eleven different countries. He’s the Hulk spitting out the bullet that Bruce put into his mouth; he’s the Hulk catching Tony as Tony falls like a shooting star out of the wormhole closing New York. He’s a man, sprawled face-down on a bridge as a horde of alien soldiers rampage towards him.

 

Bruce gets up. He stares the Hulk in the face and lets anger take over for the last time. He thinks,  _ I am not a hero,  _ and the world goes dark.

 

* * *

 

When Bruce wakes up on a different planet in the ruins of the New York Sanctum, he has a strong, unpleasant sense of déjà vu _. _ All he wants to do is sleep for a year or three, but Thanos is coming to kill half the universe, and Bruce is not a hero but he volunteers to fight anyway (it’s not like he has a choice). He’s standing in the middle of a ruined street with exhaustion running deep in his bones and he thinks,  _ This is familiar _ . He sinks into his rage like he’s used to doing, lets go of the walls that keep the Hulk in check and waits, but—

 

There’s nothing. His body stays treacherously tiny. His skin doesn’t have even a hint of green.  _ Come on, _ Bruce thinks, gritting his teeth as Thanos’ minions advance. 

 

“Are you planning to help?” Tony yells.

 

“I’m trying!” Bruce calls back wildly.

 

He squeezes his eyes shut and calls up memories of Ross, of his father, of all the people that he hates with a vengeance, all the people who tried to hurt him and did. His heart is pounding his way out of his chest and his white-knuckled fists are clenched so tight his fingernails are digging into the palms of his hands, and he’s  _ angry, _ he’s  _ furious _ –but the Hulk still doesn’t take over. 

 

“I got nothing!” he screams to Tony, and suddenly everything seems a little more real. He’s painfully aware of the cars being flung back and forth, the shrapnel flying everywhere, and the spells that Strange and Wong are throwing around. A battle full of heroes and there’s Bruce, with his tiny, fragile, very-human-and-not-at-all-green body in the middle of it. It’s the first time that Bruce has been the underdog in a battle situation in a very long time, and he runs for his life with fear sitting sick in his stomach.

 

In the end, Tony protects Bruce, like Bruce did for him four years ago. Bruce is alive, but the Hulk has disappeared. It’s ironic—he’s tried to get rid of the Hulk for over a decade to no avail, but when Bruce needs him the most, the Hulk is cowering in a corner somewhere. The Hulk-shaped hole in the back of Bruce’s mind leaves him uneasy, almost as if his shadow was missing on a sunny day. If the Hulk’s gone, where did he go? Will he come back? When? More importantly, will Bruce be able to survive this war against Thanos without him?

 

Bruce is someone who’s spent his entire life struggling for control. The Hulk resurfaces in Wakanda only to scream, “No!” and Bruce wants to scream right back, “What the fuck do you mean ‘No’?!” because he’s spent a decade working to subdue the Hulk and get him to cooperate, and when Bruce finally succeeded, when he grasped control tight in his hands, in the end none of it mattered. The Hulk was gone, a toddler throwing a temper tantrum over losing to an enemy bigger than him. 

 

The Hulk was gone, and Bruce was alone. 

 

Not an accident, not a hero, not a monster. 

 

Just a man. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave kudos or comment if you enjoyed this or have any feedback.


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